"En matière d’éloquence, de caractérisation et de vie, Tyler Duncan a été le héros parmi les solistes de la soirée. On soulignera l’adéquation parfaite entre les trois voix masculines, tout comme leur typicité de timbre très juste pour ce répertoire : Staples, légèrement nasillard, et Moody ont été excellents."
-Le Devoir
at the Oregon Bach Festival:
"Pärt's ‘Passio’ chillingly recounts the crucifixion. "The soloists were excellent. Most impressive was baritone Tyler Duncan, whose authoritative delivery and orotund baritone voice earnestly conveyed the words of Jesus." -The Register-Guard
at the Spoleto USA Festival:
"Early this week, I discovered the extraordinary Canadian baritone Tyler Duncan, who made his chamber music series debut with a rendition of Robert Schumann's masterpiece for solo voice and piano...Dichterliebe...Duncan has one of those perfect lieder voices: flexible, expressive, consistent in tone and pitch. He also has the requisite dramatic flair and the intelligence to convey the meaning of the poetry by Heinrich Heine. He did so, and more, on Sunday.
Singing Dichterliebe requires physical and mental stamina. It's not enough to express the essence of each song; the performer must find the narrative through-line, the emotional arc. He must embody the heartbroken lover recalling, fondly at first, his blooming desire and amorous bliss, then progressing into the bitterness, anger and sorrow felt by someone spurned.
Duncan expertly conveyed all of this, singing from memory. He had internalized each phrase and devised a convincing character for the stage who bemoaned in beautiful phrases his heartache.
Duncan seemed relaxed on stage and he sang with confidence, his lyrical voice clear, his diction crisp but not artificial. It's not often one gets to hear this (or any) song cycle performed live, in its entirety, by such graceful and competent musicians.
On Wednesday, Duncan was back on stage at the Dock Street, this time to perform Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte ("To the distant beloved"), accompanied on piano with panache by his wife Erika Switzer.
Duncan and Switzer performed this the first time when they were both students. It was evident that they, too, take An die ferne Geliebte personally. Together, they traded the emotions expressed in the poetry; they shared the musical phrasing, knowing in advance what the other would do."
-The Post and Courier
MASTER CHORALE'S ORFF SOMETHING TO SHOUT ABOUT:
"Carmina Burana is no modest undertaking, and for once the San Diego Symphony assembled all the right players on the field for the big game...Each of the cantata's vocal three soloists brought vibrant, fresh vocal allure and winning dramatic characterization to their roles...
Baritone Tyler Duncan easily won over the audience with his coy depiction of the young swain or the tipsy abbot, and he found for each role an appropriate color in his well-trained, resonant voice. The top of his range sported a confident tenorial timbre, and he was able to slip in and out of his pleasing falsetto - a trick Orff indulged in with impunity - gracefully."
-Ken Herman, SanDiegoStory.com
Bach's St. Matthew Passion with Duke Chapel Choir/Orchestra Pro Cantores:
"Equally effective was baritone Tyler Duncan in the role of Jesus. With wide experience in Baroque music performances, Duncan brought fine musicianship and a keen awareness of the depth of feeling necessary in the portrayal of the part of Christ."
-Classical Voice North Carolina
Oregon Bach Festival for Bach's St. Mark Passion:
"Most impressive were the three lower voices: Jesus, sung by baritone Tyler Duncan, was trenchant and silver toned, turning each phrase with appropriate changes of color and cadence."
-Oregon Arts Watch
"Baritone Tyler Duncan sang Jesus with consistent beauty and gravity beneath a "halo" of strings."
-The Oregonian
New York's Bard Music Festival:
"On August 8 came the program "The Song Cycle as Drama," featuring an excellent performance of Winterreise in the intimate, acoustically fine Olin Hall. Baritone Tyler Duncan and his fellow Canadian, pianist Erika Switzer (piano) gave a musically straightforward and deeply affecting account, winning deserved audience tributes. Duncan, who's scored in Baroque music, seems poised to continue the Lieder singing legacy of his countrymen Gerald Finley and Russell Braun, sharing their virtues of tonal beauty, interpretive restraint and dynamic mastery. It's a manly, beautifully graded sound, capable of tenorish resonance and bass underpinnings. His gestures and stances were forthright, never melodramatic, and his German excellent. Switzer offered musically cogent, dynamically pliable and consistently responsive playing. This Winterreise proved highly memorable."
-David Shengold, Opera News Online
"But the high point of the day was the afternoon performance of Winterreise. Baritone Tyler Duncan convinced me that he’s lived through the heartache the two dozen songs comprising this cycle describe. His vocal tone was rich and focused, his understanding of the texts nuanced to the stories they tell.
Erika Switzer was an equal partner; less obvious, perhaps, but only because she sang only with music. In Die Post for example, she captured the relentlessness of the horse and horn as Duncan effectively varied the sound of the strophic text. And Switzer caressed the chromatic wind-gusts of Der Lindenbaum as Duncan told what at first seems a poignant folk-tale but glows with deeper melancholy as it progresses."
-Metroland
Minneapolis Recital Debut :
"On Tuesday evening, I caught a wonderful recital by Canadian baritone Tyler Duncan and collaborative pianist Erika Switzer. They performed sets of songs about childhood, travel, love and loss from the first half of the 20th century, the words coming mostly from Robert Louis Stevenson and Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the music from Reynaldo Hahn, Darius Milhaud, Erich Korngold and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Bringing the songs to lovely life were Duncan and Switzer, a team that achieved an admirable balance between piano and voice, urgency and reflection, power and playfulness.
There was no printed text in the program, but none was needed, for the lyrics were all in English and Duncan's articulation was immaculate. He used his very expressive face to humorous effect when he released his inner child (be he exuberant, frightened or pouty) on Hahn's Five Little Songs and Milhaud's Child Poems. On the latter, Switzer skillfully brought out the jazz-inflected harmonies that inspired Milhaud student Dave Brubeck.
Korngold was known as a film composer, and Duncan made each of his Five Songs absorbingly cinematic, especially Wings, an arresting, grief-tinged carpe diem. But the evening peaked with Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel, a setting of nine poems by Stevenson with a plethora of sharp contrasts in mood. Duncan and Switzer ably conveyed the valedictory feel of the final three songs, sadness at the memory of an irretrievable past giving way to consolation from the immortality of art."
-The Saint Paul Pioneer-Press
Pacific Music Works' St. Matthew Passion:
"Tyler Duncan, an admirable Jesus last week, blossomed still further on Saturday in the St. John arias."
-The Seattle Times
Seattle Symphony debut:
"...there was so much to praise in the superb lineup of vocal soloists, the high quality of the players and the sense of drama throughout all the participating ensembles. This was no static oratorio, but a deeply moving theater piece with beautiful, contrasting musical textures...the rest of the soloists also were impressive, particularly baritone Tyler Duncan (as Jesus)."
-The Seattle Times
Milwaukee Symphony debut, Hans Graf conducting Schubert's Mass No. 6:
"Soprano Joélle Harvey, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Rivera, tenors Marc Molomot and Sean Panikkar, and baritone Tyler Duncan sang the solo and small-ensemble sections of the Mass with musical color and meaning as well as a tremendous ensemble sense."
-The Milwaukee Journal
Boston Early Music Festival performances of Handel's first opera, Almira:
"Tyler Duncan’s resonant baritone combined lyrical and dramatic qualities that were just right for the Moorish Raymondo..."
"Tyler Duncan, baritone, brought regal bearing and commensurate noble tone to his role as Raymondo, a mysterious and early-on disguised King of Mauretania..."
-The Boston Musical-Intelligencer
"I was likewise taken with the rich, erotically charged color of Tyler Duncan’s Raymondo..." -The Hub
New York Philharmonic debut, Masaaki Suzuki conducting:
"Tyler Duncan produced his refined baritone with care and artistry and dispatched yards of neat coloratura."
-Opera News Online
Chautauqua Festival debut in the Brahms Requiem:
"...Duncan entered in passages high in his range with excellent diction and very impressive expression in Herr, lehre doch mich. The exchanges between Duncan and the chorus seemed like conversation..."
-The Chautauquan Daily
Calgary Philharmonic with Roberto Minczuk conducting Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:
"The final movement, however, was notably more in the heroic vein, considerably helped by an enthusiastic Calgary Philharmonic chorus and a first-rate quartet of soloists...Individually the members of the quartet sang impressively well..."
-The Calgary Herald
Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte at the American Spoleto Festival:
"First, a mention of Canadian baritone Tyler Duncan, who plays the Speaker/First Priest: His wonderful voice is honey-coloured and warm, yet robust and commanding. When he first came on stage, his back was to the audience, but his authoritative singing absolutely focused our attention."
-The Globe and Mail
Brahms Requiem with Christopher Seaman and the Rochester Philharmonic:
"What left me wanting more were the few solo lines of baritone Tyler Duncan. What a fantastic voice: Natural talent, technical skill, and thorough training. Duncan's program notes mention music degrees from Munich and Augsburg, and it showed. His pronunciation and elocution of the German text was so well done, each word could be understood all the way to the balcony. I can only hope that he will soon return to Rochester for a concert in which he is featured."
-(Rochester) City Newspaper
"Guest baritone Tyler Duncan, making his RPO debut, dispatched his solos with dramatic urgency. Given a little poetic license, you could describe his voice as an iron fist in a velvet glove: great carrying power with a sensuous edge."
-(Rochester) Democrat and Chronicle
Haydn's The Creation with the Evansville Philharmonic:
"The voices of Raphael and Adam were sung by baritone Tyler Duncan. Mr. Duncan is an able and charismatic performer. He sings with beautiful tonal clarity and brought great feeling and expression to the roles. His interpretation of Now Shines Heaven in the Brightest Glory, in which Haydn's sense of humor comes out, was very funny as he sang about the creation of insects and worms and the bassoons imitated the sounds of beasts."
-Courierpress.com
Messiah with Kent Tritle and Musica Sacra in Carnegie Hall:
"The baritone Tyler Duncan delivered the texts with a powerful voice and dramatic conviction, enunciating the words with appropriate bite. The energetic applause after The Trumpet Shall Sound was merited by both Mr. Duncan's passionate singing and the vibrant playing of the trumpeter Scott McIntosh."
-The New York Times
Spoleto Festival debut, as Tom Friendly in the ballad opera Flora or Hob in the Well:
"Chuchman and Duncan, both Canadians, gave delightful performances in terms of singing and acting. Their voices are clarion bright, yet rich and burnished with color...Duncan's baritone is robust and compelling. They both have glittering careers ahead."
-Opera Canada
Concert with Toronto’s Tafelmusik:
“Duncan is one of those rare lyric baritones with rich, full low notes—ideal for singing Bach’s music. His showpiece was the sacred solo Cantata No. 82, Ich habe genug. Duncan showed tremendous sensitivity to the music, while bringing out the wide emotional and dramatic range of the text . His singing was equally winsome in two airs from other sacred Cantatas, O du angenehmes Paar is a slight, wistful-sounding piece with a particularly inventive accompaniment. Lasset dem Höchsten is a boisterous song of thanks that made an ideal cap to a sehr gemütlich (very cozy – intimate, in a friendly sense) musical evening.”
-The Toronto Star
Demetrius in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Princeton Festival:
"As the young Athenians, especially Tyler Duncan (a robust-voiced Demetrius) gave dramatically nuanced and vocally solid performances.”
-The New York Times
Festival Vancouver concerts:
“…the trio was joined by baritone Tyler Duncan—a locally bred and very talented singer who is apparently a long-time veteran of MusicFest Vancouver—to perform a MusicFest-commissioned original set of eight songs about love, composed by Stephen Chatman…with his rich voice and stage presence, Duncan pulled them off with panache.”
-The Vancouver Sun
Bach’s St. John Passion at the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival:
“Baritone Tyler Duncan invested Jesus’ utterances with expressive nobility.”
-The Cleveland Plain-Dealer
In recital:
"Duncan's Sleep, with its truncated phrases and long pauses, was delicious; and his full and leisurely baritone gave Winter a gravitas it would not otherwise have had, settling over the orchestra's active triple meter and weighing it down like a storm cloud."
-The New York Times
"In the very first song of Tyler Duncan’s recital at Weill Hall, something unusual happened; he found the emotional center and struck it with such poignancy that not a sound could be heard from anyone in the audience. Mr. Duncan’s vocal technique is solid and secure, with a sound that has warmth and power in the middle to low register, and delicate refinement in the upper reaches.”
-The Toronto Star